Great discussion! Very clear and concise explanations by Dr Eric and great questions and structure of the video overall. You mentioned the Google Doc would go in the description so it would be good to have that too. I'm not convinced of moral realism yet but lots of interesting arguments to think more about.
Awesome video, I have been looking for exactly this topic. I still would rather argue from God to objective morality than from objective morality to God, but these are some good arguments to consider.
If God decides what is moral, then morality is subjective. It’s just what he likes. If we say morality is grounded in God’s nature, then we face a dilemma. Either “good “ means “like God’s nature “, or “God’s nature is good “ means “God’s nature matches some external standard “. In the first case, we have to ask why we should take God’s nature as our standard. In the second case, we don’t need God, just the external standard.
@@robinharwood5044 "in the second case, we don’t need God, just the external standard." The biggest argument against moral realism right now in philosophy is the evolutionary argument that if moral realism were true evolution on its own would not produce creatures that are capable of recognizing what is moral, therefore moral realism could only lead us to moral skepticism, because we'd have to assume that we cannot know what is morally true.
Great video!! Interestingly enough, I had already “bitten the bullets” of 1. Rejecting the possibility premise 2. Rejecting Moorean arguments 3. Rejecting the existence of epistemic facts 4. Rejecting the idea of an “indispensable project” Quite some time ago. Not that I think I can (or would want to) convince anyone against moral realism, it just doesn’t really hold water with me.
~ 12:39 - What about this for a parody argument: It's possible that its necessarily true that chocolate is the most delicious thing to eat. Therefore its true that chocolate is the most delicious thing to eat. I'm not sure if that works or not. I think this first argument is the most compelling of those presented. But I'm still confused by the first and second premise and I think maybe it turns on the meaning of the word 'possible.' If someone asks if something is possible I'm tempted to say that if I can't prove that its impossible then I have to concede that it might be possible. But I'm not sure if saying something *might* be possible is the same as saying something is possible. So when the second premise says that its possible one of these truths is true then I want to say that I can't show that its impossible but I don't know that that means its possible. Maybe it is impossible but I just don't have the knowledge to be able to show it.
On the 2 challenges to the 'evolutionary debunking arguments': ~28:45 - His answer here only addresses the case of someone saying that the moral realist is *mistaken* about morality and I agree, in order to say someone is mistaken you need some external standard to compare it to, but what about simply asking 'how do you know that your intuitions about morality map onto real objective facts?' ~28:55 - I think there's a middle ground between global scepticism and assuming that all our perceptions are reliable that he's not considering. We can tentatively assume minimal reliability in order to act in the world and we instantly get feedback when it comes to our perceptions of the physical world and those things can be later confirmed through multiple lines of evidence. We don't get anything remotely similar for perceptions about morality however. We can get through life perfectly fine without ever making assumptions about the reliability of our moral perceptions so why take that extra step?
@ISAI GARCIA Thanks for your thoughts. Some responses below. "...and another only take as reliable the perceptual beliefs of wich you are the most certain about..." 1) I'm not sure that this approach would work because wouldn't you also need to take the minimal assumptions for navigating the physical world in order to navigate the physical world? "...it's easy to imagine someone who believes moral realism provides a much better foundation for a fulfilling life..." 2) I'm not sure I agree with you about this. It's easy to imagine someone thinking that living by *a* moral code gives them a more fulfilling life but its not clear to me that they also need to believe that their moral code is objectively true. "Now, about instant feedback, it doesn't seem to be a relevant difference, if we accept metaphysical knowledge (about the nature of the world) then it seems we are committed to the possibility of knowledge without instant feedback" 3) I'm not sure that I am committed to metaphysical knowledge. I can't prove either way whether a God exists so I assume non existence because its a moral practical approach to assume the existence of the minimal number of things. However, I'm quite happy to posit the existence of something, like for numbers for example, to make some kind of model work. If we can use those ideas to build things in the real world that have utility like technology, medical advancements etc. I'll happily utilise those things as long as they continue to satisfy my basic perceptions that they are giving utility but its not clear to me that I ever need to accept that the thing posited in the beginning but not proven actually exists. Although it would be curious if it were so useful while not existing. " it seems more likely that our moral perceptions are accurate if God exists since not only he could make it so we have accurate moral perceptions" 4) I don't know about that. We're constantly being told that God works in mysterious ways and that we can't know the mind of God etc. when it comes to addressing the problem of evil so couldn't it be that God actually makes our moral perceptions the exact opposite of the underlying facts, or he gives us moral perceptions when there are no underlying facts (perhaps through the vehicle of evolution).
@ISAI GARCIA Great, thanks again. Unfortunately, as you note, this is where the philosophy get's more difficult and reading philosophical papers I find much more difficult than watching videos and having discussions. However, I do appreciate the links and I'll try to chip away at them to further my understanding of those topics. A few further thoughts on a couple of points; 2) Well, I don't find it a struggle so I guess its hard to see the other side. Plenty of other naturalists have no problem with lack of ultimate meaning that a God is meant to bring. I've never really considered that people think that a non theistic objective morality is a source of ultimate meaning and purpose so that's an interesting thought. 3) I'm fairly new to this view so I appreciate the replies here particularly. One thought I have is that having a set standard of what constitutes knowledge and what doesn't seems to complicate things and kind of seems like an arbitrary standard. I wonder why I can't just apportion my level of confidence to the evidence without ever saying 'ok, its crossed this line, now it counts as knowledge.' I can't rule out Solipsism, but I didn't think anyone could. 3a) "while utility is a good marker of truth it is not identical to it" Yeh, I agree and this one of the reasons I doubt that our intuitions point us to moral realism. Because if evolution is true, our brains and intuitions are optimised for survival and gene propagation not for truth detection. It would make sense that understanding the truth of the world *would* aid our survival but its also conceivable that there are instances where we'd evolve some perceptions and intuitions which don't correspond to reality but they do aid our survival. I think it's much easier to imagine this being the case with morality than with perceptions of the physical world. Although, it's interesting to think about ways in which the world could be that would incentivise us to understand them incorrectly. I'll look into the one you've mentioned. Part of me also wants to say 'if something is not useful, do I really care if it's true?' Not sure if I'm totally onboard with this yet but it does seem like all my urges and desires are geared around utility, finding happiness in life etc. rather than detecting true things. A side point about that is it appears that even God (or the inventors of God) didn't think people would follow God's commandments just because they're 'true,' they had to throw in the incentives of heaven and hell to add that utility dimension.
~55:50 - His answer here doesn't seem to meet the objection very well. We can posit the existence of numbers or electrons because its required in our mathematical, chemical and physical models of the world and then we use those models to build things, conduct experiments etc. and those models continue to show their reliability. Morality is not remotely similar, as; (1) There's no experiments we can conduct to verify that moral truths exist and that we have access to them (2) Evolution is a perfectly good explanation of why we have feelings about right and wrong so we can't even really use those feelings as evidence that moral truths exist (3) There's no useful models that require the existence of moral truths to be posited
This was awesome. I’m wondering what Eric thinks about debunking arguments as raising the probability of theism. Also what does Eric think about abductive or inductive moral arguments (concerning ontology/metaphysical grounding of moral truths) for God’s existence? Lastly, do these type of arguments rely on the correspondence theory of truth being true? For example, we might say that things are true in virtue of them matching with something in reality so the statement “it is wrong to punch a child in the face for no reason” is true in virtue of some abstract object floating “out there” in the ether or in virtue of being a concrete mental thought in God’s mind... what does it really mean for God or an abstract object to ground the truth of a moral statement? Thanks again for the great content!
I’ll be interviewing Dr. Anne Jeffrey in a few weeks on God’s role in grounding moral facts and moral knowledge. These questions will come up in that discussion
It feels like moral judgments are made in the subconscious part of our brain and then the conscious part tries to rationalise that judgement afterwards. This makes me think that moral judgments are more like emotions than something based on logic. I also find it bizarre when philosophers treat morality as something that is independent of human existence. How can this be when morals have no meaning if there are no humans. When you look at morals that are common across all cultures, they mostly seem to have the goal of creating social harmony. There are many nonhuman social species like chimps where individuals form small groups, which gives them a tremendous survival advantage when it comes to finding food and protecting themselves. But these groups can only exist if the individuals usually display prosocial behaviour such as helping, sharing with, and comforting other group members. If you think evolution explains why these nonhuman species display prosocial behaviour, why cant the same be true for humans ? If so, evolution can explain morality because the foundation of our morality seems to be prosocial behaviour
I agree with this. Expressivism seems to be closest to how we actually psychological "do" ethics in reality. People are constantly referring back to "moral intuitions", which seem to me to be nothing more than emotional or aesthetic judgements.
I understand your point, I just want to say something about your second point. Let’s assume that morality is objective and independent of humans. If that were the case then we could compare it to another abstract concept like math. Morality brings order to society just like Math brings order to the universe and all of its properties. Now let’s assume that all humans went extinct. Would math still exist? Well, yes, it just wouldn’t be expressed or used. Similarly morality would also exist it just wouldn’t be expressed or used. Nonhuman species have also shown the ability to do math does that mean that math was created by evolution? No, it wasn’t even made by humans. It was discovered. The properties of the universe didn’t suddenly start forming once humans started learning to count. Similarly the fact that moral values can be shown by non human species doesn’t mean it formed because of evolution. We discovered morality just as much as we discovered math.
@@joshuatowers8303 What use is morality if there are no humans? I dont see how morality without humans makes any sense? If humans dont exist, what does good or evil mean?
~39:40 - I'm not sure what you'd call this but the way I've been approaching epistemology recently is just that I apportion my confidence level to the evidence. There's no magical level where something crosses over to becoming knowledge and so far that hasn't been a problem for me. Under this model the reason I don't have a high confidence in moral facts is that there isn't really any evidence for moral facts. All we have is people's feelings about morality which are often conflicting, change over time and are easily manipulated which fits with exactly what we'd expect if this was a product of evolution.
Good thoughts! "All we have is people's feelings about morality which are often conflicting, change over time and are easily manipulated which fits with exactly what we'd expect if this was a product of evolution." there are feelings ("I feel sad today..."), but isn't that different from an intuition, where it to you that something is correct? It seems correct that you ought not kick the baby of some friend of yours. I might feel sad about someone kicking a baby, just as I might feel sad that my favored sports team loss, but there's something stronger here: a felt sense that something is true. And these don't change that much or conflict that much either. The vast majority of humanity would have this intuition, and it would take a lot of manipulation to overturn this intuition, don't you think?
@@andrewmoon1917 Edit: I've just realised (after writing the comment below) that I might have been focusing more on other comments I've made rather than the one you were replying to so do let me know if you didn't think I addressed your points. Thanks for your reply. I was a bit imprecise with 'feelings' meaning to encompass intuitions as well. I agree that most people would agree that kicking a baby is wrong but I don't think it helps the moral realist case for the following reasons; (1) It's not clear to me at what level of agreement on moral intuitions that evolution ceases to be a sufficient explanation of them. The tribe that has a strong intuition that the children of the tribe should be cared for and protected probably would have a better chance of passing on their genes than the tribe that had a much weaker feeling or intuition towards protecting children. I guess you could say it makes this explanation unfalsifiable as it will fit with any collection of moral intuitions and normally I'd think that was as strike against an explanation but it does seem like most, if not all, moral explanations suffer from the same problem. (2) I think its possible that the strong feeling/intuition we have about kicking babies is largely a product of our modern culture and wouldn't always have been the case throughout history. For example, I've heard of cultures in the past that would discard imperfect children because they didn't fit the mould that society wants. Further, when societies were much more isolated I'm not sure that you'd find people equally caring of babies that weren't from their own in-group. I know that your example mentioned 'your friend's baby' rather than any old baby but I'm not sure if that was meant to imply that its only wrong to hurt your friend's baby but not the baby of a competing tribe or perhaps the baby from a wife's affair. (3) There seems to be a lot of inconsistencies about even strong instances of moral intuitions. For example; kicking your friend's baby is wrong but there's nothing wrong with spending money on things that will barely have any impact on your wellbeing and happiness while that money could go to have a significant positive impact on starving, suffering and dying children elsewhere in the world. It seems like a bizarre inconsistency. I'm sure people would have a very strong moral intuition that treating animals the way they're treated in factory farms is wrong, perhaps even more wrong than kicking a baby and yet when its out of view people are perfectly happy to go on supporting that industry and don't give it a second thought. These sorts of example suggest to me that what stirs our moral intuitions most are the direct experience of the sites and sounds of pain and suffering rather than the real facts of the situation. If the moral realist's claim is that its wrong because it causes pain and suffering then I'm definitely more sympathetic to the view but it doesn't explain why we wouldn't be equally moved by pain and suffering we can verify is happening but don't experience directly. However, I think what was being put forward in this video is that moral truths are independent of consequences like pain and suffering and then I doubt whether we are actually intuiting anything as its does seem to be more about those direct experiences.
@@nickmorris2250 Thanks for the thoughts! I was responding more to the specific claims that I quoted. About conflicts, note that much of philosophy is about pointing out puzzles about our beliefs and intuitions in all sorts of areas. This happens with our beliefs about objects and their constitution, about our talk about properties, about motion (think of Zeno's paradoxes) and so on. But this doesn't make me stop believing in objects, that the stop sign is red, or that there's motion. Similarly, you can formulate moral puzzles (think of standard trolley problems), but I don't think the right thing to do is to just give up morality.
"However, I think what was being put forward in this video is that moral truths are independent of consequences like pain and suffering and then I doubt whether we are actually intuiting anything as its does seem to be more about those direct experiences." actually, that is a moral realist view (a hedonistic consequentialism); it's a stance independent view (the moral truths are independent of what we think of them) because the moral truths depend on facts about pain and pleasure. So, if you were to believe a hedonistic utilitarianism or consequentialism, then you'd be a moral realist!
Seems to be that we argue for epistemic facts in a way very different from the way one might argue for moral facts. No? I don't see the move from epistemic facts existing to moral facts as existing as persuasive.
@@DryApologist Fair enough. But epistemic obligations and truths are rooted in widely accepted axioms. We can tell whether something is epistemically obligatory by referring to the axioms. What are the axioms of objective morality?
@@zenbanjo2533 I would say objective morality is fairly self evident as well though. Pretty much everyone (if not everyone) recognizes that certain actions are just or unjust for example and that covers a lot of morality, I would say.
@@DryApologist Is that as far as the analysis goes? That it’s just seems self evident? How do you deal with evolutionary debunking? And what about the professional Moral philosophers for whom it is not self evident? I just don’t get it. If there were no moral truths we would still think there are. There is also the added problem of it really not being clear what it means for something to be “good“ or “evil“. Are you begging this question by simply saying it’s self evident? What is “it”?
Given any ought "out there", one can non trivially ask if it ought to be the case that they follow the ought "out there". Also what about Moore's question?
Could only get about 20 minutes in because I couldn't get over the first argument. Others have expressed why it fails. I'm not sure if that was supposed to be the strongest argument; if not, maybe consider putting the strongest one first in the future. Asking people to watch nearly an hour and a half of video is a tall order already, many might not be willing to invest that much when it starts off so weak, especially when both presenters seem to be oblivious to legitimate problems with the structure.
~ 1:09:30 - The problem here is that you need to consider *all* the consequences of an action, not just pinpoint a few of the obvious ones to make your case. If having your organs harvested when you came in for a routine checkup was a normal thing it would throw the whole medical system into disarray and obviously people wouldn't come in for checkups anymore which means they'd probably be more sick and all sorts of problems would flow on from that. If you just think about it a bit more deeply you can easily defeat that worry about consequentialism.
~1:05:00 - This part is interesting. I feel like there's three problems with accepting moral realism and this part of the video perhaps addresses #3, although I'm not sure. My three problems/steps are; 1) How do we know moral truths exist 2) How do we discover moral truths, if they exist 3) If we do discover them, why should we follow them (and/or what happens if we don't) If I understand him correctly, he's saying that on his position the moral oughts are normative facts that we ought to follow without any additional reason. Interesting but I'm still left wondering why? It's a very foreign concept that someone should follow some action without there being a reason that's tied to the consequences of that action. Even God didn't think that people would just follow an ought on its own which is why he has to incentivise people with heaven and hell (or so the story goes). It just seems like a ridiculously foreign concept that I have no reason to accept. I don't really think you can defeat the is ought problem but one way to approach it is to ask what do the words 'ought' and 'should' mean if the is/ought problem is real. As far as I can tell they don't mean anything. So if we want to keep these words then we just expand their definition to include the ability to bridge the is ought gap.
4:53 Turned off pretty early on by the statement, “if reality is true, then your life matters, and my life matters,” as if the reverse could not be true or even was contraindicated. Why need anything matter objectively to matter at all? Are we flat incapable of choosing to care about something - that is, to make something matter - by consensus? More to the point: isn’t that all that it means for something to “matter” - at least in any probable, demonstrable, as of necessity kind of sense? Because you have to ask yourself, what does it mean for something to “matter”? To matter implies at least one person, so that when you say, “your life matters”, the appropriate response is, “matters to whom?” And then you have to ask, whom must you impress with objectivity before they will agree that you matter? And whomever that person is, why can’t we all agree that he’s a jerk and just excise him and his noxious opinions from the conversation? What am I missing here?
I don't think you're missing anything. If objective value did not exist I'd still care about my friends and family and myself. In fact, it's unclear why objective value, or anything "mattering" in the way realists think things matter, would make any difference. For comparison: would food taste better if it was "objectively tasty"? No. It would taste exactly the same.
Thank you so much for the video. I have a question about the first argument presented as I have thought of a possible objection that is a sort of parody argument ( if you interpret that term loosely enough). Or rather two possible objections. The first goes as follows. For any morela claim which we believe to be true, one can claim by similar logic as used in the video game hat is possible for that claim to be false. If said claim is false then it is necessarily false. This by similar logic outlined in the video we can conclude that the claim is false . One can also Run a similar objection where one could use the modal argument presented im the video to argue that if it is possible for moral statements to be true this would necessarily entusiasmo a contradiction . For example take two contradictory moral statements such as “X action is moral” and “X action is immoral”. We can argue by the logic presented in the video that if either statement is true then it is necessarily true . And similarly argue that either statements could be possible true . And thus use the logic outlined in the video to arrive at a contradiction. I think this points to some sort of mistake in reasoning which I am not smart enough to precisely pinpoint but which I believe comes from a lack of distinción between epistemic and modal possibility/necessity. I believe the argument fails to distinguish between a statemnents being epistemically possible, meaning that we have ascribed it a non-zero probability of being true given our current knowledge of the world, and a state of affairs( not a statement) being modally possible meaning that it could be actualized in some possible world. Thus while I think that one cannot conclude that a statement is epistemically impossible (meaning we can never knwo for certain that it is false) we can conclude that a state of affairs is modally impossible ( meaning we have a good reason to believe that there is a high probability that such a state of affairs is not actualizar in our world and is not actualized in any possible world). I realize I have not put this particularly clearly and that’s. UA-cam comment is not the best place for such discussion but still any clarification on these objection woudl be much appreciated.
How is stating that you don't have knowledge not incoherent? It seems to me that once epistemological norms are not objective then we are just in subjectivism. Anyone could have epistemological norms for whatever they want.
How does theism help? The problem is two fold. First a) what difference does it make if a god exists and has morals and b) how can anyone actually KNOW what moral 'truths' are actually FROM said god and what are just what someone invents and claims to be from said god. It seems theists think that just saying 'god did/said/thought it' makes it objective/true/real/etc. They still have to explain why.
Modal ontological argument for morality: P2 I don't know if it is possible for a moral fact to be true. I also say it is possible any moral fact is does not exist, therefore, there are no moral facts Moorean argument: P7 I can think of several reasons to punch helpless children. I think you can too. If u want to include "for fun" then you have made it subjective since it depends on the mental state of the person punching and therefore subjective. The act of punching a child is not a moral fact Companions in Guilt: P11 I don't know why if there are epistemic facts, then there are moral facts. What is the link? Do Epistemic facts cause moral facts? Enoch's argument: I don't understand why normative truths must lead to moral facts.
Morality is the FEELING that certain actions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to do. FEELINGS are subjective. Morality is subjective. Saying morality was ‘written on our hearts” is admission that morality is subjective because it’s an attempt to identify why we FEEL certain actions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
~16:40 - I'm not quite understanding this step. He said *if* moral properties are attached to descriptive properties... but where does he defend that they are attached to descriptive properties? I don't see why that's necessarily the case. Moral truths could be totally independent transcendent objects that exist in some possible worlds but not others.
Another idea on parody arguments: Couldn't you say that it's possible that objective morality is necessarily non existent? It seems like you could just eco his reasoning exactly to justify this ie. if there is no objective moral truth about punching someone in this world, it's not just that it happens to be the case, its that it will be the same in every world that's descriptively identical.
The modal argument seems to repeat Godel's mistakes. It smuggles in necessity in the definition and conflates first and second order modal operators. I would reject premise 3, it doesn't follow from 1 and 2, and should be rewritten as "So, it is *possible* that at least one of these putative objective moral truths is *necessarily* true". After rewriting this premise, the rest of the argument obviously falls apart. Allow me to even offer a parity argument :-) Within the published journals of the My Little Pony (MLP) discourse, the mainline branch of the philosophers (known as the "objectivists") have posited that, because MLP is woven so deeply into the fabric of the universe, there may exist some ponies that are so important, that are such fundamental lynchpin's of basic human reality, that they are not merely contingent beings (like say, Steven Universe characters), and that their existence is actually necessary across all possible worlds.. Such beings have been given the nomenclature "Universal Ponies" (UPs) in the literature. While the existence of UPs may seems intuitively obvious to most us (and may also be ascertained directly using our built-in faculty, for aesthetics ) there still remain a small number of bitter skeptics & nihilists who do stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the truth of UPs, most likely out of a sense of pure spite and a simple desire for contrariness. None the less, despite this blatant, bad-faith denialism on the part of these skeptical fringe elements, there has arose amongst the philosophical community a desire to prove them wrong once and for all, conclusively, using facts & logic. While certain minor points of disagreement remain to be ironed out, at the very least a definition of what would constitute a Universal Pony (UP) has been broadly agreed upon by all those within the discourse, even amongst the nay-sayer minority.. A Universal Pony (UP) is defined as a My Little Pony character that, if it existed, would exist necessarily. Note that this is simply a definition, a piece of agreed-on technical terminology that the MLP philosophers are using amongst themselves to conduct the debate. The definition in and off itself does not imply the existence of these beautiful creatures. However, i can now offer the modal argument for the existence of Universal Pony's. Premise 1: If UPs exist, they exist necessarily (by definition) Premise 2: It is possible that at least one UP exists... I mean there is nothing inherently self-contradictory or incoherent about the concept of an UP, so it would seem at least *possible* Continue on with the rest of the modal argument from Premise 3, replacing "objective moral truth" with "Universal Ponies" *Suddenly, Universal Ponies appear in a puff of magic smoke, having just been defined into existence through modality*
@ISAI GARCIA I suppose I really don't understand premise 3, or why the move from X is possible to X is actual works. It seems there is a first order modal predicate P "X is necessary". and a second order modal predicate P2 "P is possible", and then the conflation of the second order with the first order is what allows the move. is As you point out, if you're not already a realist, then "biting the bullet" in this case really doesn't cost you anything.
Wow, Eric Sampson just unloaded a massive amount of confused gibberish, as I expected in any attempt to argue for something logically impossible, objective morality, which is ruled out by arguments of the form in the Euthyphro dialog.
Well done, thank you both for sharing!
Eric is impressive. Enjoyable talk. Thanks.
I'm still on the fence about realism, but I do love Eric's personality. Very positive and humble.
Great discussion! Very clear and concise explanations by Dr Eric and great questions and structure of the video overall. You mentioned the Google Doc would go in the description so it would be good to have that too.
I'm not convinced of moral realism yet but lots of interesting arguments to think more about.
Awesome video, I have been looking for exactly this topic. I still would rather argue from God to objective morality than from objective morality to God, but these are some good arguments to consider.
If God decides what is moral, then morality is subjective. It’s just what he likes.
If we say morality is grounded in God’s nature, then we face a dilemma.
Either “good “ means “like God’s nature “, or “God’s nature is good “ means “God’s nature matches some external standard “.
In the first case, we have to ask why we should take God’s nature as our standard.
In the second case, we don’t need God, just the external standard.
@@robinharwood5044 "in the second case, we don’t need God, just the external standard." The biggest argument against moral realism right now in philosophy is the evolutionary argument that if moral realism were true evolution on its own would not produce creatures that are capable of recognizing what is moral, therefore moral realism could only lead us to moral skepticism, because we'd have to assume that we cannot know what is morally true.
Really nice presentation, Dr. Sampson!
Great video!! Interestingly enough, I had already “bitten the bullets” of
1. Rejecting the possibility premise
2. Rejecting Moorean arguments
3. Rejecting the existence of epistemic facts
4. Rejecting the idea of an “indispensable project”
Quite some time ago. Not that I think I can (or would want to) convince anyone against moral realism, it just doesn’t really hold water with me.
Are you an error theorist? Do you really find it plausible to reject the existence of epistemic facts?
@@phillwithskill1364 yeah, give an argument against it
~ 12:39 - What about this for a parody argument:
It's possible that its necessarily true that chocolate is the most delicious thing to eat.
Therefore its true that chocolate is the most delicious thing to eat.
I'm not sure if that works or not.
I think this first argument is the most compelling of those presented. But I'm still confused by the first and second premise and I think maybe it turns on the meaning of the word 'possible.'
If someone asks if something is possible I'm tempted to say that if I can't prove that its impossible then I have to concede that it might be possible. But I'm not sure if saying something *might* be possible is the same as saying something is possible.
So when the second premise says that its possible one of these truths is true then I want to say that I can't show that its impossible but I don't know that that means its possible. Maybe it is impossible but I just don't have the knowledge to be able to show it.
Thanks for sharing the word doc! Much appreciated and super helpful
On the 2 challenges to the 'evolutionary debunking arguments':
~28:45 - His answer here only addresses the case of someone saying that the moral realist is *mistaken* about morality and I agree, in order to say someone is mistaken you need some external standard to compare it to, but what about simply asking 'how do you know that your intuitions about morality map onto real objective facts?'
~28:55 - I think there's a middle ground between global scepticism and assuming that all our perceptions are reliable that he's not considering. We can tentatively assume minimal reliability in order to act in the world and we instantly get feedback when it comes to our perceptions of the physical world and those things can be later confirmed through multiple lines of evidence. We don't get anything remotely similar for perceptions about morality however. We can get through life perfectly fine without ever making assumptions about the reliability of our moral perceptions so why take that extra step?
@ISAI GARCIA Thanks for your thoughts. Some responses below.
"...and another only take as reliable the perceptual beliefs of wich you are the most certain about..."
1) I'm not sure that this approach would work because wouldn't you also need to take the minimal assumptions for navigating the physical world in order to navigate the physical world?
"...it's easy to imagine someone who believes moral realism provides a much better foundation for a fulfilling life..."
2) I'm not sure I agree with you about this. It's easy to imagine someone thinking that living by *a* moral code gives them a more fulfilling life but its not clear to me that they also need to believe that their moral code is objectively true.
"Now, about instant feedback, it doesn't seem to be a relevant difference, if we accept metaphysical knowledge (about the nature of the world) then it seems we are committed to the possibility of knowledge without instant feedback"
3) I'm not sure that I am committed to metaphysical knowledge. I can't prove either way whether a God exists so I assume non existence because its a moral practical approach to assume the existence of the minimal number of things. However, I'm quite happy to posit the existence of something, like for numbers for example, to make some kind of model work. If we can use those ideas to build things in the real world that have utility like technology, medical advancements etc. I'll happily utilise those things as long as they continue to satisfy my basic perceptions that they are giving utility but its not clear to me that I ever need to accept that the thing posited in the beginning but not proven actually exists. Although it would be curious if it were so useful while not existing.
" it seems more likely that our moral perceptions are accurate if God exists since not only he could make it so we have accurate moral perceptions"
4) I don't know about that. We're constantly being told that God works in mysterious ways and that we can't know the mind of God etc. when it comes to addressing the problem of evil so couldn't it be that God actually makes our moral perceptions the exact opposite of the underlying facts, or he gives us moral perceptions when there are no underlying facts (perhaps through the vehicle of evolution).
@ISAI GARCIA Great, thanks again. Unfortunately, as you note, this is where the philosophy get's more difficult and reading philosophical papers I find much more difficult than watching videos and having discussions. However, I do appreciate the links and I'll try to chip away at them to further my understanding of those topics.
A few further thoughts on a couple of points;
2) Well, I don't find it a struggle so I guess its hard to see the other side. Plenty of other naturalists have no problem with lack of ultimate meaning that a God is meant to bring. I've never really considered that people think that a non theistic objective morality is a source of ultimate meaning and purpose so that's an interesting thought.
3) I'm fairly new to this view so I appreciate the replies here particularly. One thought I have is that having a set standard of what constitutes knowledge and what doesn't seems to complicate things and kind of seems like an arbitrary standard. I wonder why I can't just apportion my level of confidence to the evidence without ever saying 'ok, its crossed this line, now it counts as knowledge.' I can't rule out Solipsism, but I didn't think anyone could.
3a) "while utility is a good marker of truth it is not identical to it"
Yeh, I agree and this one of the reasons I doubt that our intuitions point us to moral realism. Because if evolution is true, our brains and intuitions are optimised for survival and gene propagation not for truth detection.
It would make sense that understanding the truth of the world *would* aid our survival but its also conceivable that there are instances where we'd evolve some perceptions and intuitions which don't correspond to reality but they do aid our survival. I think it's much easier to imagine this being the case with morality than with perceptions of the physical world. Although, it's interesting to think about ways in which the world could be that would incentivise us to understand them incorrectly. I'll look into the one you've mentioned.
Part of me also wants to say 'if something is not useful, do I really care if it's true?' Not sure if I'm totally onboard with this yet but it does seem like all my urges and desires are geared around utility, finding happiness in life etc. rather than detecting true things. A side point about that is it appears that even God (or the inventors of God) didn't think people would follow God's commandments just because they're 'true,' they had to throw in the incentives of heaven and hell to add that utility dimension.
~55:50 - His answer here doesn't seem to meet the objection very well. We can posit the existence of numbers or electrons because its required in our mathematical, chemical and physical models of the world and then we use those models to build things, conduct experiments etc. and those models continue to show their reliability.
Morality is not remotely similar, as;
(1) There's no experiments we can conduct to verify that moral truths exist and that we have access to them
(2) Evolution is a perfectly good explanation of why we have feelings about right and wrong so we can't even really use those feelings as evidence that moral truths exist
(3) There's no useful models that require the existence of moral truths to be posited
This was awesome. I’m wondering what Eric thinks about debunking arguments as raising the probability of theism. Also what does Eric think about abductive or inductive moral arguments (concerning ontology/metaphysical grounding of moral truths) for God’s existence? Lastly, do these type of arguments rely on the correspondence theory of truth being true? For example, we might say that things are true in virtue of them matching with something in reality so the statement “it is wrong to punch a child in the face for no reason” is true in virtue of some abstract object floating “out there” in the ether or in virtue of being a concrete mental thought in God’s mind... what does it really mean for God or an abstract object to ground the truth of a moral statement? Thanks again for the great content!
I’ll be interviewing Dr. Anne Jeffrey in a few weeks on God’s role in grounding moral facts and moral knowledge. These questions will come up in that discussion
It feels like moral judgments are made in the subconscious part of our brain and then the conscious part tries to rationalise that judgement afterwards. This makes me think that moral judgments are more like emotions than something based on logic.
I also find it bizarre when philosophers treat morality as something that is independent of human existence. How can this be when morals have no meaning if there are no humans. When you look at morals that are common across all cultures, they mostly seem to have the goal of creating social harmony. There are many nonhuman social species like chimps where individuals form small groups, which gives them a tremendous survival advantage when it comes to finding food and protecting themselves. But these groups can only exist if the individuals usually display prosocial behaviour such as helping, sharing with, and comforting other group members. If you think evolution explains why these nonhuman species display prosocial behaviour, why cant the same be true for humans ? If so, evolution can explain morality because the foundation of our morality seems to be prosocial behaviour
I agree with this. Expressivism seems to be closest to how we actually psychological "do" ethics in reality. People are constantly referring back to "moral intuitions", which seem to me to be nothing more than emotional or aesthetic judgements.
I understand your point, I just want to say something about your second point. Let’s assume that morality is objective and independent of humans. If that were the case then we could compare it to another abstract concept like math. Morality brings order to society just like Math brings order to the universe and all of its properties. Now let’s assume that all humans went extinct. Would math still exist? Well, yes, it just wouldn’t be expressed or used. Similarly morality would also exist it just wouldn’t be expressed or used. Nonhuman species have also shown the ability to do math does that mean that math was created by evolution? No, it wasn’t even made by humans. It was discovered. The properties of the universe didn’t suddenly start forming once humans started learning to count. Similarly the fact that moral values can be shown by non human species doesn’t mean it formed because of evolution. We discovered morality just as much as we discovered math.
@@joshuatowers8303 What use is morality if there are no humans? I dont see how morality without humans makes any sense? If humans dont exist, what does good or evil mean?
@@pazuzil This assumes humans are the only sapient creatures in existence.
@@dtphenom there was a time when there was no life anywhere in the universe and at this time morality would have had no meaning
~39:40 - I'm not sure what you'd call this but the way I've been approaching epistemology recently is just that I apportion my confidence level to the evidence. There's no magical level where something crosses over to becoming knowledge and so far that hasn't been a problem for me. Under this model the reason I don't have a high confidence in moral facts is that there isn't really any evidence for moral facts. All we have is people's feelings about morality which are often conflicting, change over time and are easily manipulated which fits with exactly what we'd expect if this was a product of evolution.
Good thoughts! "All we have is people's feelings about morality which are often conflicting, change over time and are easily manipulated which fits with exactly what we'd expect if this was a product of evolution."
there are feelings ("I feel sad today..."), but isn't that different from an intuition, where it to you that something is correct? It seems correct that you ought not kick the baby of some friend of yours. I might feel sad about someone kicking a baby, just as I might feel sad that my favored sports team loss, but there's something stronger here: a felt sense that something is true.
And these don't change that much or conflict that much either. The vast majority of humanity would have this intuition, and it would take a lot of manipulation to overturn this intuition, don't you think?
@@andrewmoon1917 Edit: I've just realised (after writing the comment below) that I might have been focusing more on other comments I've made rather than the one you were replying to so do let me know if you didn't think I addressed your points.
Thanks for your reply. I was a bit imprecise with 'feelings' meaning to encompass intuitions as well. I agree that most people would agree that kicking a baby is wrong but I don't think it helps the moral realist case for the following reasons;
(1) It's not clear to me at what level of agreement on moral intuitions that evolution ceases to be a sufficient explanation of them. The tribe that has a strong intuition that the children of the tribe should be cared for and protected probably would have a better chance of passing on their genes than the tribe that had a much weaker feeling or intuition towards protecting children.
I guess you could say it makes this explanation unfalsifiable as it will fit with any collection of moral intuitions and normally I'd think that was as strike against an explanation but it does seem like most, if not all, moral explanations suffer from the same problem.
(2) I think its possible that the strong feeling/intuition we have about kicking babies is largely a product of our modern culture and wouldn't always have been the case throughout history. For example, I've heard of cultures in the past that would discard imperfect children because they didn't fit the mould that society wants. Further, when societies were much more isolated I'm not sure that you'd find people equally caring of babies that weren't from their own in-group. I know that your example mentioned 'your friend's baby' rather than any old baby but I'm not sure if that was meant to imply that its only wrong to hurt your friend's baby but not the baby of a competing tribe or perhaps the baby from a wife's affair.
(3) There seems to be a lot of inconsistencies about even strong instances of moral intuitions. For example; kicking your friend's baby is wrong but there's nothing wrong with spending money on things that will barely have any impact on your wellbeing and happiness while that money could go to have a significant positive impact on starving, suffering and dying children elsewhere in the world. It seems like a bizarre inconsistency.
I'm sure people would have a very strong moral intuition that treating animals the way they're treated in factory farms is wrong, perhaps even more wrong than kicking a baby and yet when its out of view people are perfectly happy to go on supporting that industry and don't give it a second thought.
These sorts of example suggest to me that what stirs our moral intuitions most are the direct experience of the sites and sounds of pain and suffering rather than the real facts of the situation. If the moral realist's claim is that its wrong because it causes pain and suffering then I'm definitely more sympathetic to the view but it doesn't explain why we wouldn't be equally moved by pain and suffering we can verify is happening but don't experience directly.
However, I think what was being put forward in this video is that moral truths are independent of consequences like pain and suffering and then I doubt whether we are actually intuiting anything as its does seem to be more about those direct experiences.
@@nickmorris2250 Thanks for the thoughts! I was responding more to the specific claims that I quoted.
About conflicts, note that much of philosophy is about pointing out puzzles about our beliefs and intuitions in all sorts of areas. This happens with our beliefs about objects and their constitution, about our talk about properties, about motion (think of Zeno's paradoxes) and so on. But this doesn't make me stop believing in objects, that the stop sign is red, or that there's motion. Similarly, you can formulate moral puzzles (think of standard trolley problems), but I don't think the right thing to do is to just give up morality.
"However, I think what was being put forward in this video is that moral truths are independent of consequences like pain and suffering and then I doubt whether we are actually intuiting anything as its does seem to be more about those direct experiences."
actually, that is a moral realist view (a hedonistic consequentialism); it's a stance independent view (the moral truths are independent of what we think of them) because the moral truths depend on facts about pain and pleasure. So, if you were to believe a hedonistic utilitarianism or consequentialism, then you'd be a moral realist!
On evolutionary debunking arguments, yeah, I think that's a bigger problem! I think there's much more to say about it. :)
I think the companions in guilt is the strongest of the 4.
Seems to be that we argue for epistemic facts in a way very different from the way one might argue for moral facts. No? I don't see the move from epistemic facts existing to moral facts as existing as persuasive.
@@zenbanjo2533 Well to me they both seem to be abstractions that we intuit, so I think there is a similarity in that regard.
@@DryApologist Fair enough. But epistemic obligations and truths are rooted in widely accepted axioms. We can tell whether something is epistemically obligatory by referring to the axioms. What are the axioms of objective morality?
@@zenbanjo2533 I would say objective morality is fairly self evident as well though. Pretty much everyone (if not everyone) recognizes that certain actions are just or unjust for example and that covers a lot of morality, I would say.
@@DryApologist Is that as far as the analysis goes? That it’s just seems self evident? How do you deal with evolutionary debunking? And what about the professional Moral philosophers for whom it is not self evident?
I just don’t get it. If there were no moral truths we would still think there are.
There is also the added problem of it really not being clear what it means for something to be “good“ or “evil“. Are you begging this question by simply saying it’s self evident? What is “it”?
Given any ought "out there", one can non trivially ask if it ought to be the case that they follow the ought "out there". Also what about Moore's question?
Is it possible that the riemann hypothesis is true?
Could only get about 20 minutes in because I couldn't get over the first argument. Others have expressed why it fails. I'm not sure if that was supposed to be the strongest argument; if not, maybe consider putting the strongest one first in the future. Asking people to watch nearly an hour and a half of video is a tall order already, many might not be willing to invest that much when it starts off so weak, especially when both presenters seem to be oblivious to legitimate problems with the structure.
~ 1:09:30 - The problem here is that you need to consider *all* the consequences of an action, not just pinpoint a few of the obvious ones to make your case. If having your organs harvested when you came in for a routine checkup was a normal thing it would throw the whole medical system into disarray and obviously people wouldn't come in for checkups anymore which means they'd probably be more sick and all sorts of problems would flow on from that. If you just think about it a bit more deeply you can easily defeat that worry about consequentialism.
~1:05:00 - This part is interesting. I feel like there's three problems with accepting moral realism and this part of the video perhaps addresses #3, although I'm not sure. My three problems/steps are;
1) How do we know moral truths exist
2) How do we discover moral truths, if they exist
3) If we do discover them, why should we follow them (and/or what happens if we don't)
If I understand him correctly, he's saying that on his position the moral oughts are normative facts that we ought to follow without any additional reason. Interesting but I'm still left wondering why? It's a very foreign concept that someone should follow some action without there being a reason that's tied to the consequences of that action. Even God didn't think that people would just follow an ought on its own which is why he has to incentivise people with heaven and hell (or so the story goes). It just seems like a ridiculously foreign concept that I have no reason to accept.
I don't really think you can defeat the is ought problem but one way to approach it is to ask what do the words 'ought' and 'should' mean if the is/ought problem is real. As far as I can tell they don't mean anything. So if we want to keep these words then we just expand their definition to include the ability to bridge the is ought gap.
PSA: If you run this at .75 speed Sampson does not sound like he’s wired on cocaine.
4:53 Turned off pretty early on by the statement, “if reality is true, then your life matters, and my life matters,” as if the reverse could not be true or even was contraindicated. Why need anything matter objectively to matter at all? Are we flat incapable of choosing to care about something - that is, to make something matter - by consensus? More to the point: isn’t that all that it means for something to “matter” - at least in any probable, demonstrable, as of necessity kind of sense?
Because you have to ask yourself, what does it mean for something to “matter”? To matter implies at least one person, so that when you say, “your life matters”, the appropriate response is, “matters to whom?” And then you have to ask, whom must you impress with objectivity before they will agree that you matter? And whomever that person is, why can’t we all agree that he’s a jerk and just excise him and his noxious opinions from the conversation?
What am I missing here?
I don't think you're missing anything. If objective value did not exist I'd still care about my friends and family and myself. In fact, it's unclear why objective value, or anything "mattering" in the way realists think things matter, would make any difference.
For comparison: would food taste better if it was "objectively tasty"? No. It would taste exactly the same.
@@lanceindependent, well put. The food analogy will be particularly useful.
Thank you so much for the video. I have a question about the first argument presented as I have thought of a possible objection that is a sort of parody argument ( if you interpret that term loosely enough). Or rather two possible objections. The first goes as follows. For any morela claim which we believe to be true, one can claim by similar logic as used in the video game hat is possible for that claim to be false. If said claim is false then it is necessarily false. This by similar logic outlined in the video we can conclude that the claim is false .
One can also Run a similar objection where one could use the modal argument presented im the video to argue that if it is possible for moral statements to be true this would necessarily entusiasmo a contradiction . For example take two contradictory moral statements such as “X action is moral” and “X action is immoral”. We can argue by the logic presented in the video that if either statement is true then it is necessarily true . And similarly argue that either statements could be possible true . And thus use the logic outlined in the video to arrive at a contradiction.
I think this points to some sort of mistake in reasoning which I am not smart enough to precisely pinpoint but which I believe comes from a lack of distinción between epistemic and modal possibility/necessity. I believe the argument fails to distinguish between a statemnents being epistemically possible, meaning that we have ascribed it a non-zero probability of being true given our current knowledge of the world, and a state of affairs( not a statement) being modally possible meaning that it could be actualized in some possible world. Thus while I think that one cannot conclude that a statement is epistemically impossible (meaning we can never knwo for certain that it is false) we can conclude that a state of affairs is modally impossible ( meaning we have a good reason to believe that there is a high probability that such a state of affairs is not actualizar in our world and is not actualized in any possible world). I realize I have not put this particularly clearly and that’s. UA-cam comment is not the best place for such discussion but still any clarification on these objection woudl be much appreciated.
How is stating that you don't have knowledge not incoherent? It seems to me that once epistemological norms are not objective then we are just in subjectivism. Anyone could have epistemological norms for whatever they want.
How does theism help? The problem is two fold. First a) what difference does it make if a god exists and has morals and b) how can anyone actually KNOW what moral 'truths' are actually FROM said god and what are just what someone invents and claims to be from said god.
It seems theists think that just saying 'god did/said/thought it' makes it objective/true/real/etc. They still have to explain why.
Modal ontological argument for morality: P2 I don't know if it is possible for a moral fact to be true. I also say it is possible any moral fact is does not exist, therefore, there are no moral facts
Moorean argument: P7 I can think of several reasons to punch helpless children. I think you can too. If u want to include "for fun" then you have made it subjective since it depends on the mental state of the person punching and therefore subjective. The act of punching a child is not a moral fact
Companions in Guilt: P11 I don't know why if there are epistemic facts, then there are moral facts. What is the link? Do Epistemic facts cause moral facts?
Enoch's argument: I don't understand why normative truths must lead to moral facts.
Morality is the FEELING that certain actions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to do. FEELINGS are subjective. Morality is subjective. Saying morality was ‘written on our hearts” is admission that morality is subjective because it’s an attempt to identify why we FEEL certain actions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Why think that your feeling of what is right and what is wrong is not a perception of what is objectively right and wrong?
@@TheAnalyticChristian Why think that it is?
@@AsixA6 the 4 reasons given in this video. Did you watch the whole video?
@@TheAnalyticChristian None of those are good reasons.
@@AsixA6 why?
9:32, premise 2 is groundless, therefore the a ontological argument is junk.
~16:40 - I'm not quite understanding this step. He said *if* moral properties are attached to descriptive properties... but where does he defend that they are attached to descriptive properties? I don't see why that's necessarily the case. Moral truths could be totally independent transcendent objects that exist in some possible worlds but not others.
Another idea on parody arguments:
Couldn't you say that it's possible that objective morality is necessarily non existent?
It seems like you could just eco his reasoning exactly to justify this ie. if there is no objective moral truth about punching someone in this world, it's not just that it happens to be the case, its that it will be the same in every world that's descriptively identical.
the existence of real pain is the evidence of that my friend that is like a alarm of the iving beings for avoid the real bads
You can basically reverse the seconds premise. "It's possible that that none of those moral statements are true"
36:02 The way one "ought" to behave is qualitatively different from the way our knowledge of physical reality "is". Fail.
23:40, Highly uncontroversial is not objectively true. Fail.
The modal argument seems to repeat Godel's mistakes. It smuggles in necessity in the definition and conflates first and second order modal operators. I would reject premise 3, it doesn't follow from 1 and 2, and should be rewritten as "So, it is *possible* that at least one of these putative objective moral truths is *necessarily* true". After rewriting this premise, the rest of the argument obviously falls apart. Allow me to even offer a parity argument :-)
Within the published journals of the My Little Pony (MLP) discourse, the mainline branch of the philosophers (known as the "objectivists") have posited that, because MLP is woven so deeply into the fabric of the universe, there may exist some ponies that are so important, that are such fundamental lynchpin's of basic human reality, that they are not merely contingent beings (like say, Steven Universe characters), and that their existence is actually necessary across all possible worlds.. Such beings have been given the nomenclature "Universal Ponies" (UPs) in the literature.
While the existence of UPs may seems intuitively obvious to most us (and may also be ascertained directly using our built-in faculty, for aesthetics ) there still remain a small number of bitter skeptics & nihilists who do stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the truth of UPs, most likely out of a sense of pure spite and a simple desire for contrariness.
None the less, despite this blatant, bad-faith denialism on the part of these skeptical fringe elements, there has arose amongst the philosophical community a desire to prove them wrong once and for all, conclusively, using facts & logic. While certain minor points of disagreement remain to be ironed out, at the very least a definition of what would constitute a Universal Pony (UP) has been broadly agreed upon by all those within the discourse, even amongst the nay-sayer minority.. A Universal Pony (UP) is defined as a My Little Pony character that, if it existed, would exist necessarily. Note that this is simply a definition, a piece of agreed-on technical terminology that the MLP philosophers are using amongst themselves to conduct the debate. The definition in and off itself does not imply the existence of these beautiful creatures.
However, i can now offer the modal argument for the existence of Universal Pony's.
Premise 1: If UPs exist, they exist necessarily (by definition)
Premise 2: It is possible that at least one UP exists... I mean there is nothing inherently self-contradictory or incoherent about the concept of an UP, so it would seem at least *possible*
Continue on with the rest of the modal argument from Premise 3, replacing "objective moral truth" with "Universal Ponies"
*Suddenly, Universal Ponies appear in a puff of magic smoke, having just been defined into existence through modality*
@ISAI GARCIA I suppose I really don't understand premise 3, or why the move from X is possible to X is actual works. It seems there is a first order modal predicate P "X is necessary". and a second order modal predicate P2 "P is possible", and then the conflation of the second order with the first order is what allows the move. is As you point out, if you're not already a realist, then "biting the bullet" in this case really doesn't cost you anything.
Wow, Eric Sampson just unloaded a massive amount of confused gibberish, as I expected in any attempt to argue for something logically impossible, objective morality, which is ruled out by arguments of the form in the Euthyphro dialog.